We assume you are willing to stipulate Royal's legendary status. If not, be aware that the numbers support the description.

With a record of 184-60-5 in 23 seasons, he ranks 28th in career victories among NCAA major college coaches. He was 167-47-5 in 20 years at Texas, where his teams won three national championships and 11 Southwest Conference titles. He coached 77 all-conference players, 26 All-Americans, two Outland Award winners and future recipients of the Outland and Heisman Trophy.

Royal's selection, however, represents something of a departure for the Texas Legends series. His predecessors were Roger Clemens, who pitched for the Astros last year and could do so again in 2007, and Lance Armstrong, who won his record seventh Tour de France cycling championship in 2005.

By contrast, Royal, 82, has not coached since 1976 and retired as UT's athletic director in 1980. His oldest former players at Texas are in their late 60s, and his last transcendent player, Earl Campbell, turns 52 on March 29.

And that brings us to the point of today's discussion: In a world where Britney Spears' scalp and American Idol vote totals are front-page news, why do so many people still love, adore and respect Darrell Royal?

Royal, for one, is stumped to provide an answer.

"When I retired," he said last week, "I thought it would be a year or two and then they'd forget about me. All this is something I didn't anticipate."

Winning, of course, has a lot to do with it, but Royal's legend transcends his numbers.

He came to Texas as a young man, at age 32, and won his first national title at 39. He retired at 52 and receded from the public eye during the tenure of successors who were often less than than enthusiastic about competing in his shadow and were unable to replicate his success.

Time has been his ally. Of the top 30 coaches in major college career victories, only one — Eddie Anderson of Holy Cross and Iowa — retired at an earlier age than did Royal. And only one lived longer after leaving coaching than Royal's 30 years in retirement — D.X. Bible, who lived for 33 years after coaching the Longhorns from 1937 to 1946 and who, as UT athletic director, hired Royal in 1957.

He never outlasted his welcome, and he endured long enough to see Mack Brown embrace his legacy while also delivering a national title.

"He is the soul of Texas Longhorns football," San Antonio businessman Red McCombs said. "We all have just this minute on earth, and then we go down the road. But the soul of Texas football lives today. It will still be alive and well in 50 years, and Darrell Royal put the soul back in Texas football."

'Pride as a teacher'

There were, of course, difficult times — controversies involving race and the role of football in Texas culture and, before he retired, his opponents' descent into the morass of NCAA rules violations. Those times, though, are footnotes for those who who flock to his side at
Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium
, which was named in his honor in 1996.

His frequent game-day companion — Houston attorney Joe Jamail, for whom the stadium's field was named in 1997 — sees Royal's bedrock values as the cornerstone of his legend.

"The world is full of critics. We don't have any more heroes, and everybody is pretty cynical about everything," Jamail said. "But Darrell is looked at differently. He never compromised his beliefs. He represented pride, not so much in himself but his pride as a teacher."

As a writer for newspapers in Fort Worth and Dallas and later for Sports Illustrated, Dan Jenkins got to see all of the great coaches at work. Royal, Jenkins said, had a unique relationship to Texas and Texans, especially when compared to contemporaries like Woody Hayes at Ohio State or John McKay at USC.

"Darrell's association with the Longhorn fans was more intimate," Jenkins wrote in a recent e-mail. "Darrell had good buddies in all the other towns. Woody was standoffish, gruff, and stayed out of the public eye. Most Buckeyes respected him but never got to know him.

"McKay once told me he wasn't revered by USC alums. They expected him to win. When McKay won his first national championship for the Trojans in '62, I asked him how he was rewarded, and he said some people got together and bought him a new set of tires."

One admirer — an Aggie, at that — once described Royal as "a sweet Bear Bryant." In that vein, Keith Jackson, the retired voice of ABC's college football broadcasts, said Royal got more done with less volume than any coach he encountered.

"He was probably the quietest football coach I ever knew," Jackson said. "He wasn't a shouter. He would talk to you with some force, but usually he would explain carefully what you were trying to do and why you were failing to get there. He usually got his message across."

Royal was particularly gifted in the care and feeding of the Fourth Estate, with a little help from the Longhorns' sports information director — the late Jones Ramsey, the self-styled "World's Tallest Fat Man."

"I fondly recall the first time Jones took two or three of us to El Rancho for lunch," Jenkins said. "Somebody asked him if it was any good, and Jones said, 'Is it good? You go in the front and eat the dinner and go out the back and eat the garbage.' It was the kind of thing Darrell probably said first."

A language all his own

They were called Royalisms — "Dance with who brung us," "You just scratch where it itches," "He's as quick as a hiccup," "We got saucered and blowed," "We're as average as every day's wash." Their number is legion, and they were an eagerly anticipated part of every Royal news conference.

"We would wait around, and he would finally use one of those damned lines, and we would say, 'Well, there's your lead,' " said former Associated Press writer Robert Heard, who compiled a treasury of Royalisms titled Dance With Who Brung Us.

In this area, as in most, Royal was adaptable. Mickey Herskowitz, the longtime Houston sports columnist who now teaches at Sam Houston State, recalls the day Edwin "Bud" Shrake of the Dallas Morning News called Royal about 4 p.m. when the coach was in meetings.

"Darrell called Shrake back about 7:30, and Shrake said, 'I don't need you now. I needed you at 4, when I had a column to write,' and hung up," Herskowitz said. "It was abrupt, but Bud's point was that his time was valuable, too.

"Darrell told his secretary that if Bud or any writer on deadline called to let him know. He didn't go into a tirade. He understood, and he responded. It was pretty remarkable."

Equally remarkable were Royal's relationships with coaches, particularly Frank Broyles, who retired as Arkansas' head coach on the same night Royal put down his bucket at Texas in December 1976.

"I know his phone number by heart," Broyles said Wednesday, rattling off the digits. "I talked with him two days ago, and we had a great visit."

Their conversations, however, never touch on a rivalry that during the 1960s was unsurpassed for spine-tingling, gut-wrenching drama, particularly a 14-13 Arkansas victory in 1964 that ended Texas' hopes of repeating as national champion and the Longhorns' 15-14 victory in college football's centennial season of 1969.

"We were friends and admirers and would take vacations together in the summer, but we would never discuss our games," said Broyles, 82, who Saturday announced he will retire as athletic director this year. "We still don't discuss Texas and Arkansas."

Their friendship, Broyles said, was typical of Royal's ability to build relationships that transcended the game.

"He did it with people and fans and faculty," Broyles said. "He was a great X's and O's man, but that wasn't where he stopped. Wherever he went, people liked him."

High praise from Teaff

Most of those excursions ended with Texas victories. But former Baylor coach
Grant Teaff
, now the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, recalls the day Royal stood tallest in defeat.

Teaff's 1974 Baylor team had just recovered from a 24-7 halftime deficit to beat the Longhorns 34-24 en route to their first Southwest Conference title in 50 seasons, and the locker-room celebration was in full swing when Royal came calling.

"When he walked in, you could have heard a pin drop," Teaff said. "He said to our players and staff and supporters, 'I want you to know first of all that was no fluke. You whipped us. You deserved to win. Now go on and win the championship.'

"That was symbolic of the kind of man that he was as a coach and the kind of man he remained through the years. I went through some terrible times in the Southwest Conference when things went on that had no place in college football. Darrell Royal never was part of that. He always stood tall."

That sense of respect extended to his players, who were treated with a firm hand but without the hypersensitive hovering so common today.

"We got a promise from Royal that he wouldn't overmanage his players with what they could say," Herskowitz said. "We were interviewing Pat Culpepper (Texas' All-SWC linebacker in 1961) one day, and Pat was being really funny. We looked up and saw Darrell, and somebody said, 'Darrell, you said you weren't going to do this.' Darrell said, 'I'm not trying to be intimidating. I just like listening to Pat talk.' "

Several former players are on tonight's program, including Bobby Lackey from his 1957 team, James Street and Randy Peschel from the 1969 national championships, and the Talbert brothers — Charlie, Don and Diron — whose presence alone should be worth the price of admission at an event expected to raise more than $400,000 for Texas Children's cancer center.

Royal, too, will speak in an interview-style discussion conducted by longtime Texas athletic department spokesman Bill Little, so perhaps another Royalism will be on the agenda.

After all, Royal has always had a gift for a well-turned, well-timed phrase. In 50 years of sportswriting, Dave Campbell, the founder of Texas Football magazine, can recall few moments to match Royal's comments after his final game, quoting a Floyd Tillman song: 'I've dwelled with kings; I've dwelled with bums. I'm in your church; I'm in your slums.' "

"He's never been stereotyped," Campbell said. "As a coach, he wasn't afraid to take a chance. He's one of a kind."

In the 50th year of Darrell Royal's tenure as a Texas Legend, it is a romance, it seems, that will never die.